Pre-match: Copa do Mundo 2018, Quartas-de-Final: Brasil vs. Bélgica, 6 de Julho de 2018

Maybe Marquinhos can be eased into that RB spot. We have a plethora of young CBs and would be able to spare Marquinhos.

My mind is drawing blank on young LBs besides Wendell.

 

I've said before, I'm very concerned about how progressively shallower our talent pool's been getting since Bosman. What we wouldn't give to have Ze Maria and Junior (the Palmeiras one), as up and coming FB prospects right now.

 

I agree but unless he's regularly playing that position for club (which he isn't) then I doubt any coach (wether it's Tite or not) would let him take that national team spot ahead of any natural RB.
You're right, Brazil has never had any trouble finding a good CB pairing (except for that poofy-haired guy which many Brazilians hate). So that's not really a problem. And as we saw with this World Cup, age is really a nonfactor.

 

Denial

Anger

-> Bargaining (me: What if this had just gone in?)

Depression

Acceptance

 

VAR referees for Brazil match today german, italian and main ref serbian...

 

weak penalty imo. despite that 1 frame. the one against Switzerland on GJ was much more clear

 

Severely exposed, that own goal was terrible with another Brazil player in front of him.

Paulinho is another one who needs to go permanently. What was he looking at on that Cortious rebound? IMO, GJ should've stayed on with Paulinho getting dropped a lot sooner. Guy just isn't Selecao quality.

Coutinho I think was feeling the fatigue of a very long season in the second half. Some of his passes were terrible and a couple of poor shots.

Regardless, it's been a decade with mediocre players. What's the youth cycle looking like?

 

That's only because there is no one to replace Alves. How sad has that LB position looked this decade?

 

That's a yellow in almost any situation. VAR is terrible and imo they should just give the managers some sort of challenge or something. Take it out of the refs hands for when it should be checked.

 

A lot of these players will be in Copa 2018; it’s only a year away. The RB spot is weak so Alves might still go but a lot of them should be fazed out afterwards.

I wouldn’t be upset if Marcelo wasn’t called up for a few game. 2nd World Cup he has disappointed me.

 

Like I said before Brazil is playing against bias referees also...

 

Tite admite que não usou Fred na Copa por conta de lesão sofrida há um mês.

Ugh. Then why not cut him and bring someone else before the competition began?

 

Belgium does not get those 2 goals if Casemiro is playing. Maybe they still win because obviously you're changing things around, but to simplify everything, Fernandinho was the lower case goat of this game.

 

Eh, that whole South America v Europe question is pretty lame. What do you expect when they're only 5 SA teams competing vs. about the 20 European? The odds are already against them.

 

Tim Vickery: Brazil's lack of a genuine midfield playmaker doomed their World Cup run

 

Or maybe it was because we didn't convert one of many chances we had. Stats are there, we were better than Belgium but they were able to convert chances and had a help from Fernandinho.

Rich coming from Vickery. According to him Tite is a god and lack of midfield means Tite didn't plan accordingly.

 

That's fair. But despite the bad luck, this part of the analysis is sound:

>...[T]he defeat has explanations that go far beyond a poor night from Fernandinho. This might be seen as a match in which the balance of the Brazil midfield was exposed.

>Coach Tite has been pondering for some time on the composition of his central midfield trio. The standard during qualification was the tried and trusted idea of one to get the ball, one to give it and one to go; Casemiro protecting the defence, Renato Augusto organising the play and Paulinho bursting forward as an element of surprise.

>Renato Augusto lost form, and Tite came up with contrasting solutions. One, theoretically against the stronger teams, was to re-enforce the marking with Fernandinho coming in alongside Casemiro. The other, far more attacking, was to switch Philippe Coutinho from the right flank to the midfield trio - and this ended up becoming the base formation.

>It was rolled out for the first time in the final warm-up friendly against Austria, and then used throughout the World Cup. The initial idea was that this would be reserved for weaker opposition, when Brazil were looking to break down deep defences. But it became the go-to lineup against all comers - and Belgium exposed its weaknesses.

>The new formation twisted Brazil to the left, where they had an interesting trio of Marcelo, Coutinho and Neymar all working together. On the other flank, Willian was left on his own. Belgium took advantage of this gap, between Willian and the rest of the team. This was the space that Kevin De Bruyne found to run the game in the first half. Brazil were simply not set up to deal with a player running at them from that sector - and with De Bruyne picking his passes so well, Coutinho's deficiencies as a marker were also exposed. Tite's team were wide open.

>Coutinho did come up with a magnificent chipped pass to set up the goal for Renato Augusto, a moment of fine technique and precision. But it was almost the only time he made an impact on the game. For much of the evening, his game was marked by misplaced passes and sluggish decision making. His performances got worse during the tournament - an excusable consequence of having to play a role to he is not accustomed to, that of a genuine midfielder, having to work up and back during the course of the game. He commented after the warm-up game against Austria that carrying out this function had left him tired. Over the course of the next few weeks, it clearly drained his strength.

At one point, as I said during the game, it felt like the Costa Rica match, with Willian isolated on the right with no support. This probably needed to change at half time to the extent possible with the existing bench.